The honour code

The singular lack of a vibrant democratic culture of disobedience and dissent within political parties can perhaps be explained with the institution of family – in this case, a joint family. Ironically, at a time when joint families are rapidly disintegrating, political parties have not only appropriated the form, but are reinvigorating and renewing it with one of its essential ingredients – that of demanding unquestioning obedience to the head of the family. Represented in diverse creative works – literature, plays and cinema – the joint family is structured essentially around the principle of loyalty to the patriarch, and in some instance, the matriarch, who lays down the rules holding the family together. Under no circumstances can one break the code of family honour.

Family honour is paramount, even more significant than principles of justice or fairness. Of course, it’s not just the joint family, which practices the honour code. Family, as an institution, guards and preserves the code. But political parties are supposed to relate to a larger world, beyond the immediate family. Herein lies the genesis of the conflict between the demands of home and the outside world. Rabindranath Tagore’s emblematic novel ‘Ghare Baire’, made into a film by Satyajit Ray, eloquently encapsulated the possibilities of this kind of conflict.

If family honour is transposed onto political parties and the structures become one and the same, there’s reason to protest. Many would argue that the era of ideology, understood in the sense of the Cold War era, is over. Perhaps. But a different kind of ideology is deepening its roots, and even forging close links with the structures on which ‘progress and modernity’ are based. The ideology of protecting and promoting the kith and kin of powerful political leaders appears to have superseded all other political ideologies, creating in that process a larger network cutting across political parties of varying faiths.

Here’s an immutable narrative woven tightly within the fabric of Indian politics over the decades. The world’s largest democracy continued to play itself out through personality cults, rather than political and ideological beliefs. The recent Arvind Kejriwal-Robert Vadra face-off has been yet one more dramatic reaffirmation of this depressing truth. Senior Congress leaders made stunning pronouncements, some even declaring willingness to lay down their lives to save ‘their leader’. That the impassioned declaration of loyalty was aimed at shielding the controversial son-in-law of the first family has only heightened the bizarre play of words.

A reality check of the political culture around us makes us see some hard, unpleasant truths. Contrary to the popular perception that authoritarian regimes alone thrive on personality cults, the wheels of electoral and representative democracy too revolve around powerful personalities. Like the strict political commandment of ‘absolute control’, ‘absolute and unquestioning submission’ to personalities has become the guiding principle of national and regional politics. The outmoded dynasty culture that the Congress has remained steeped in has existed side by side and comfortably with democracy.

Away from the Delhi durbar, we witness similar personality cults reigning. So a Trinamool Congress MP or MLA prefaces every sentence with ‘my leader’, as do AIADMK or DMK leaders. Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar too is known to have built a cult around him, which brooks no dissent within and outside his party. When compelled to quit his chief ministership under the cloud of the fodder scam, Lalu Prasad handed over the state’s custody not to a senior party leader, but to his politically inexperienced wife Rabri Devi.

The Samajwadi Party supremo – referred to as ‘netaji’ – has promoted his own personal and family cult. The powerful dalit leader Mayawati has been at the centre of attention, reproducing over and over her cult through a myriad of forms, the most prominent of which has been her statues. Her followers and even bureaucrats around her play to this cultic politics; some of these images sitting uneasily with the democratic politics the BSP is committed to.